The Vitals

My name is Kristin. I live with my husband (A.), three young sons (Cubby, Charlie, and Jack), and old collie dog (Mia) less than a mile from the Canadian border in the far northern woods of upstate New York. Once upon a time I was going country. Now I'm gone.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

P.S. Yeah, he's adorable. He also did not nap yesterday. Maybe Santa is waiting until Christmas to grant that request. In which case, I will officially have gone as crazy as a shithouse rat* by December 25th. Fair warning.

* This lovely rustic phrase brought to you by my lovely rustic husband.

Friday, December 9, 2011

It's been many years since I've written a Christmas wish list, but I feel the need for some magical intervention for some of these requests. Everyone knows you're magic, and can therefore maybe help me out with a few things I would really like this year that might not be available at my local Sears. Namely:

1) The ability to sleep past seven in the morning. Because there is nothing more irritating than A. taking Cubby away on a Sunday morning so that Mommy doesn't have to stumble out of bed and wrestle clothes on the little maniac at six a.m. only for Mommy to lie there wishing she could just enjoy this one morning off and GO BACK TO SLEEP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. So, a little help here would be nice.

2) Proper circulation in my hands and feet. You can blame my mother for this. The woman is famous for wearing long johns in Tucson, Arizona and having hands and feet so cold they would stun a corpse. I'm not as bad as she is, but my hands, feet, and nose pretty much stay cold from November until May. This is a serious liability at Blackrock. So amp up that blood supply to my extremities, okay, Santa? Awesome.

3) A dishwasher. This would also be on the MiL's list, I suspect, since she actually does most of the dishes in our house. But when she isn't here, I do them. And DAMN, I am SICK of doing all our dishes by hand. We make SO MANY DISHES in a day, what with A., Cubby, and I all eating three meals a day at home, most of those actual cooked meals. I realize that a dishwasher is an item most people can procure without magical intervention, but most people don't live in 160-year-old house with an electrical system dating to the 1920s (people just didn't use much electricity then, and thus didn't have the amount of current available to them that a modern house might have) and barely enough hot water in the winter to keep the occupants of the house bathed and presentable.

So first we need more electrical capacity, then we need more hot water--so you'd better add a new hot water heater to this list--and then we need a complete reconfiguration of our kitchen to make a spot where a dishwasher might actually fit without blocking one of the three doors that lead in and out of that room.

Maybe I should have made that last one into a few separate requests, but I'm sure you follow.

4) A guaranteed nap for Cubby during the day. Nap times have gotten pretty sketchy lately, and there has been more than one day recently in which I have gotten all of zero naps out of him. He's too young to stop napping. Or rather, his mother is too old and tired for him to stop napping. I need a break sometime between six a.m. and seven p.m. Morning, afternoon, I don't care, as long as I get an hour in there sometime when I can go to the bathroom without a toddler in attendance whose greatest joys in life are turning on the faucet and turning off the lights. Peeing in the dark with the water running is not my idea of a fun time.

5) An immediate cease and desist order for all the damn spiders in my house that are spinning webs with such abandon that the very day I manage to sweep them all away, I find a new one in progress. Although, I suppose I should be grateful none of our spiders seem able to spell as well as Charlotte. I don't think they'd have anything very nice to write out for me.

6) And while I'm at it, peace on earth and goodwill toward men; women; children; and all cute, furry creatures great and small.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Last night as I was finishing up the dishes, I noticed the tomatoes sitting on the mantle in the kitchen.

That's right. Tomatoes. From the garden. Two tiny Roma tomatoes that have been sitting in the kitchen since the end of September. I sort of forgot about them. One of them is kind of wrinkly, but they show no signs of rot or anything.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with two tiny tomatoes. It's not as if I can make salsa with them or anything. Maybe I'll just let them sit there until I can once again say that I have tomatoes at Christmas.

And then I'll eat them, because really, I just want to get them off the mantle in the kitchen already.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Yesterday Cubby and I attended a birthday party for a now-three-year-old second cousin, at which there were many small children in attendance and pizza for lunch. The pizza place, knowing the pizza was for small kids, double-sliced the pizzas. That is, they cut each regular piece one more time so there were lots of narrow slices. And all the parents were sitting around looking at our little people with their little hands easily maneuvering their little slices of pizza to their little mouths and saying to each other, "These narrow slices are brilliant. How come I never thought of this?"

Because we are not so brilliant, I suppose. Sure does reduce the amount of tomato sauce to be cleaned off of faces and clothes, I'll tell you that.